Gaming Life in Japan

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A Kenji Eno spotting! Plus, the strangest Xbox ad yet.

By IGN Staff

Good news today in the search for Kenji Eno. The man (???) in charge (we're not sure if he was president or not) of WARP, the company behind the D's series, Enemy Zero and Real Sound went crazy towards the end of the Dreamcast era, changed his company's name to Super WARP, and left the game development business. Following a two years absence, he was at last spotted this pas Sunday night on a late-night Japanese television program about lies told by celebrities (see why we hate Japanese TV?).

Eno looks about the same as he did back in the Dreamcast D2 days, perhaps a bit more toned (here's some trivia, kids: IGNDC once interviewed Kenji Eno regarding D2 but never posted the interview -- tell a friend, but don't tell Eno). Sadly, the show mentioned nothing of Eno's current line of work, nor did Eno take any jabs at Sony (you'll recall that Eno had been previously been critical of Sony and its PSX brand and had thus concentrated his company's efforts on Sega's less popular hardware). We were left wanting to find out more!

No... he's not really crying or anything

Here's Kenji Eno's lie. Back when first getting started in the whole game thing, Eno wanted to enter a company as a programmer. Only problem was, he didn't have any real world programming skills. So, he dug up some old award he'd won in elementary school for programming and used that to get into the company. Of course, his lie was soon discovered, but he managed to stay aboard at the company by saying he could make music.

Ha ha ha ha ha. Crazy Kenji!

Here's a clip of Kenji Eno speaking Japanese. As you can see, he's quite good at the language.

FAMITSU SCORE GETFinal Fantasy X2 was the big thing in this week's Famitsu. Of course, we'd already seen it in the previous week's JUMP magazine.

Most of the reviews are for games about which we care not. Pay close attention to the Dragon Quest Characters game. It's going to be huge! Score on!

Spider Man 2, PSX: 7, 7, 6, 7

Final Fantasy, PSX: 8, 6, 7, 6

Final Fantasy II, PSX: 8, 7, 6, 6

Gakuen Toshi, PS2: 7, 6, 7, 7

Dragon Quest Characters: Toruneko's Big Adventure 3, PS2: 9, 8, 8, 10

Online Games Guru Guru Onsen, PS2: 8, 7, 8, 8

The Keihama Kyukou: Train Simulator Real, PS2: 8, 6, 7, 9

Ultraman Fighting Evolution 2, PS2: 9, 7, 7, 6

From TV Animation One Piece Treasure Battle, GCN: 8, 8, 8, 7

Silk & Cotton, GBA: 5, 5, 4, 4

Beast Shooter, GBA: 6, 6, 6, 5

Namco Super Wars, GBA: 8, 6, 7, 8

CRAZY XBOX AD GET We're not sure if this is the start of something permanent, but Microsoft aired a Japanese Xbox ad recently that stands out from its usual fare. First, the ad ditches the "Xbox" whisper from the end and the little chime from the start. On top of that, this ad isn't about any game in particular, instead focusing on the system as a whole. The ad depicts three guys racing around on tricycles. One of them uses a broom to play a bit dirty. The ad suggests that you play clean. Then... "Xbox."

You can download the ad for yourself right here. And, because we didn't want you to think that Microsoft is the only company that can cook up a peculiar ad, we've also included Sony's ad for its recently released Space Fisherman title.

MOVE ON TOKYO CG FESTIVAL As promised, Namco, Capcom and Sega held presentations as part of the Tokyo International Film Festival's all new Computer Graphics tract. Namco focused on Moto GP 3 for the PS2 with Capcom spending its time on Clock Tower 3. Sega, meanwhile, brought us our first real look at F-Zero for the GameCube. For a closer look at the game and some shoots of what the Sega presentation looked like, turn to this IGNCube story.

TYPING OF THE DEAD YEARLY GET? We're all familiar with yearly updates to sports games, but haven't you ever found yourself getting tired of the same old typing game? For the five people who answered yes, Sega has the game for you: Typing of the Dead 2003. Sega, for reasons which are cloudy at best, has decided to give PC owners a new version of Typing of the Dead. This new version doesn't seem to feature anything new as far as levels are concerned. Developer Smilebit just added modes, changed the words that appear as you play the game, and redesigned the menus. Why!?

Did anyone really ask?

PANZER DRAGOON XBOX GET Sega and developer Smilebit announced plans this week to release a limited edition Xbox that comes painted in Panzer Dragoon art and comes bundled with the first Xbox game in the legendary series. This sounds very familiar to Sega's promotional campaign with the Dreamcast, where the company would release different versions of the hardware to coincide with key game releases. Perhaps the Xbox truly is the DC's successor.

The Xbox is too big for this kind of thing

XBOX WORLDWIDE GETTABLE Microsoft is slowly pushing its system into territories other than America, Europe and Japan, and next up on the list of targets are Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The former two Asian centers will see the system launch on 11/22 with the latter receiving a release one week later. Prices will be, respectively, 1,599 Hong Kong dollars, 388 Singapore dollars and 7,490 Taiwan dollars (silly Asian countries -- the dollar is American!). Blinx, Project Gotham, Halo and Mech Assault lead the pack as far as games are concerned. All will see full localizations from instruction manuals all the way to voices.

If anyone finds themselves in any of these territories and wants to send us some pictures of the launches, e-mail IGN Japan.

AD GET The latest in print ads, scanned in super high-res for your viewing pleasure. Particular attention is warranted of the Star Ocean 3 ad, which promises a November 28th release for the game. Of course, that's not happening, and what's even worse, news of the game's delay to March of next year was revealed a couple of weeks before the ad first appeared! Someone miscommunicated something, and we're sure there are some major headaches now with what will easily be the biggest PS2 title of early next year.